Conforming Ourselves To The Will of God

Rarely do I get flamed by a reader, but this comment was sent to me privately through my contact form at this blog regarding last week’s post, The Morning After. We’ll give the woman, Ms. X I’ll call her, props for signing her real name, but that’s about all. I’m posting this because it gives me an opportunity to raise some points regarding Catholic teaching and the Church.

Before I get into that, let me say that I belong to no political party because none of them, regardless of their claims, actually work for the common good of man. So I am an independent and pick and choose who I will support in any election, viewed through the prism of my faith.

References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which we are to study in this Year of Faith, are shown as CCC with the paragraph number. Because I don’t want anybody going to hell I am speaking so bluntly.

Now for the flame:

I am very disappointed by you’re your [sic] very opinionated post. Your anger is deep. Not good talk for a Catholic. You need to examine your hatefulness. And you believe you are Christian and Catholic to boot. Think again and maybe you will see what a disservice you have done to anyone who voted for Obama. You may disagree with Obama, but our President doesn’t deserve to be bashed.

You are a disgrace to those who read your post.

My first reaction was this:

Uh… Ms. X, this is my blog and I express my opinions here. So am I not supposed to have opinions? Are you one of those Obama fans who believes in suppressing the First Amendment of the American Constitution, or do you believe it should be thrown out entirely like Obama and a lot of other politicians and some Supreme Court Justices?

It began with homilies…when people would come up and complain about them I would sit there and have a kind of out of body experience and think “I should be really affected by this, but I could care less that this person is yelling at me right now.” Of course it continued with videos spreading out across the country to friends and foes alike…I remember thinking “I should be really sad that people are attacking me” but I remember in those moments being overcome with the urge to chuckle at how little it actually DID affect me. You, as a faithful Catholic, have likely had similar experiences…and that is God working in you and preparing you for what is to come as well.

I’m a bigger fan of authentic peace, but I’d rather have a battle than surface level passive-aggressive “peace” that simply masks evil. I’ve seen, in 3.5 years of priesthood, that perhaps a battle would do us all some good. If the stats hold true, 40% of Catholics who go to Mass every week just stood in open defiance of their bishops and the Church in voting in the affirmative for a candidate who:

1) supports redefining marriage 2) supports forcing the Church to do something it will never do 3) is for abortion through all 9+ months of pregnancy 4) is for the government helping people procure abortions if they can’t afford one 5) provides for the destruction of human embryos for research

[and that’s not all, Father.]

Please draw me up a candidate who could more completely embodythe opposite of Catholicism.

Now this is my kind of priest. Ms. X, you must know a bunch of those defiant Catholics who sneer at the Pope, their bishops, and the priests while sitting in the pews on Sunday when they teach the truth about abortion, contraception, marriage and family, and what sin is. Or maybe they don’t attend church at all. There are a bunch of them out there whose attitude is, “To hell with the Pope, my bishop, and Father So-and-So. The Church can’t tell me what to do.” And they are all nicey-nice about the very things God has condemned over and over. What God condemns is for our salvation. They are, if they voted for Obama, in mortal sin and without repentance, on their way to hell. That’s probably why you don’t recognize me as Catholic.

Mortal sin (Jn. 5: 16-17; Eph. 4:18)

The Catholic Church is the only Church in world history that has taught what the Bible says and what She received from the mouths of the Apostles. She teaches it consistently over 2000 years, give or take a few years. The two sources of teaching are Sacred Scripture and Tradition and the teaching arm of the Church is the Magisterium (CCC 85, 890, 2033).

Mortal sin destroys the life of God in our souls. When we sin mortally we have made a free choice to turn away from God’s will and place another god in His place. For a sin to be mortal it must meet three conditions: it must be grave matter, committed with full knowledge, and deliberately consented to (CCC 1857).

A Catholic Obama voter has met all three criteria. Nobody can plead invincible ignorance on this (CCC 1860) because the bishops have been talking for months on why nobody can vote for politicians who support the killing of babies in the womb, the disabled, and the elderly. Catholics who claim they don’t know about this haven’t been going to church, which is also mortally sinful (CCC 2041-43). The Precepts of the Church exist to keep us totally narcissistic people from destroying ourselves by separating ourselves from God. God is the one who has told us in the Ten Commandments how we are to live, and in the Two Great Commandments. The Church merely codified it so we’d know the bare minimum of what we have to do to remain united to God.

What happens when a person commits mortal sin? Speaking authoritatively on this subject because I spent many years away from the Church trying to gratify myself and being mad at God and a lot of other people, I can tell you how it goes.

Nobody gets to mortal sin in a single jump. They get there incrementally through the darkening of the intellect and weakening of the will caused by repeated venial sins (CCC 1855).

Have you ever been underground in a cave where no light penetrates? I have. You are stone, dead blind. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Stay there long enough and you will die.

Mortal sin causes the withdrawal of God from the soul. The Holy Spirit is not in you. Your soul is totally dark. You have pushed Him out and slammed the door behind Him. Gone are the Seven Gifts that help us grow in charity. No use of Wisdom, Understanding, Fortitude, Knowledge, Counsel, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. Sinning becomes easier and easier until we feel no shame at all and are utterly defiant in the face of God. Instead of Christ, Satan is our master. We can sit in the pews and laugh at the priest, commit sacrilegious Holy Communions, advance the agenda of Satan in many areas, quit attending church altogether, and fall into greater and greater sin, like committing the crime against humanity (Pope John Paul II) of voting for abortion promoters. All the while you can seem to be a perfectly “nice” person who is out there doing just what everybody else is doing.

“Our President doesn’t deserve to be bashed”

Is telling the truth “bashing”? I called Obama the Marxist in Chief. Ms. X, I regret that you can’t recognize his Marxism, although people playing nice-nice want to soften it to “socialism”. I recommend George Orwell’s excellent books, 1984 and Animal Farm to get a clearer picture of what’s going on in America today. Orwell wrote a lot of other good books and saw what Marxism was up close and personal.

Keeping it short, Obama became a master at applying Marxist Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and fomented division and racial hatred in Chicago as a community organizer. He sat (he claims) in Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church every Sunday for about twenty years, but says he didn’t hear phrases like, “God damn America!” screamed from the pulpit. Wright praises Marxism in video and writing and is a first class Race Baiter. Obama appointed numerous Marxists to White House positions among whom are Van Jones and Anita Dunn. Once they were “outed” as such, they resigned but his closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, spouts Marxist beliefs, too.

The standout thing for me concerning Marxism is the hatred for the Catholic Church. Marxists essentially believe, when it’s all boiled down, that there is no God. They have quite a track record for trying to destroy the Church – Russia in 1917 with a regime that lasted 70 years and killed more millions than Hitler; Mexico in 1926; Spain in 1936; Eastern Europe in 1945 that subjugated Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other countries; Mao in 1948; North Korea in 1945, a Mao puppet state that is the best example of the outcome of Marxism today; and post war Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

Marxism is the work of Satan designed to separate man from God forever. What better way to do it in America today than by having Death Squad General Kathleen Sibelius force abortion and contraception on everybody, no exceptions, through legislation? Then there’s Death Squad General Daniel Berwick who essentially wants the elderly to get out of the way and die because they cost too much money to keep around.

Ms. X must think that Jesus was an angry and hateful basher when He called the Pharisees whited sepulchers and hypocrites in Matt. 23: 27. Truth isn’t my truth or Ms. X’s truth. There is only God’s truth, forever immutable, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Calling it like I see it in line with God’s Word is my privilege. I refuse to go to hell for simpering, tip-toeing around the many elephants in the room, and doublespeak.

“You are a disgrace to those who read your post.”

Ms. X is typical of many people out there who can’t stand for somebody to have opinions different from theirs. It comes from a desire to control what people think and their only recourse is an irrational ad hominem attack.

I hope and pray that I am the same kind of disgrace that Jesus was when He hung dying on the Cross.

I went back to your Morning After article to see if I had missed something!!! I didn’t. You were not hateful, in my opinion. However, Mrs. X was hateful, in calling you a disgrace. We need to pray for her.

Thanks, Colleen. You are right. And God led me to Father’s article which is really splendid. The more we write about our feelings and experiences in this spiritual combat, the more we learn that we are not alone.

Well stated response and it must be said. I’ve been engaged in many debates this past election and Obama supporters time and time again only attack, use dated rhetoric and make accusations of hate monger, bigot, misogynist… when asked to engage in reasonable dialogue they just mock, insult you, call you a disgrace or simply scoff. You’re right, their goal is to shut your down and take away your voice from the public sphere. We need to call them out for their unwillingness to engage in reasonable debate.Michael Maedoc recently posted..An Honest Assessment, Respecting Savita and Respecting Life

More power to you, Barb, of the kind that kept getting the apostles in trouble in this world and to heaven ultimately.

As a man, I love Obama by praying for him. As for his being President of the USA, I mourn the country’s chosen predicament. He is a user and ultimately an abuser with no moral compass. He has demonstrated that day after day publicly, despite and contrary to his rhetoric.
Your Ms. X misses the moral mark if she thinks Obama is right on. More pray needed!
I want to see miracles of real love.Joann recently posted..The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

I’m shocked that person called you a “disgrace”. Since when is it a disgrace to tell the truth? And I don’t get these Catholics who seem to think that saying anything critical about Obama and his ilk is a sin. I pray regularly for the Lord to pour out His Spirit upon the Church and bring new life back into those parts that have become infected with the world’s mentality.

And Michael was all too right in pointing out that people on the left simply resort to name calling when you express views that they don’t like. If you won’t embrace their views, then you’re a “bigot” (a term that has degenerated into nothing but a cheap insult and has therefore become devoid of any real meaning or use). God help them…

You see how upside down the world is? You are called a disgrace because you had the courage to speak up in the face of evil – what’s wrong with this picture? Ms. X fails to recognize that one of the reasons this country is in the mess it’s in is because people fail to speak up. When we go before the judgment seat of God our sins of omission will count against us.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” (I forgot who stated this but it is oh so true.)